03/23/05: Apocalypse Banking
I just received my order. Thanks a lot for your great service. You have been by far the best company I have ever bought anything from over the internet. I have my Apocalypse Always cd playing right now and I work in a bank. Thanks again and keep up the good work.

paul

02/21/05: You Have Been Spammed! Report At Once!
Weirdest new approach to spam came from this e-mail which had a .zip file attached. Pretty brilliant and a nice break from the unsolicited Cialis/Viagra/Penis/Breast/Animal Sex offers we usually get!

I got my order today! Woop! Thanks for the posters, they are an
exciting bonus to the order, and will soon adorn my walls.

Best to you and the rest of the crew.

In Sanity, Andrew

02/02/05: Warm and not so lonely anymore!
I recently ordered some CDs from you guys - just had to say thanks for the speed. Not only that everything arrived nice 'n' safe. It is much appreciated and now I've got Buzzkill and Black Kali Ma to warm up those long, lonely nights. Hahah.

Yeah!

02/01/05: Weirdo Freaks Unite!
I placed my first order with AT in the mid 80's. I'm still doing it.

Just recently, I ordered the new JB and Melvin's cd amoung other things. Fabulous, fabulous, fabulous. Thank you for all the compilations, Alice Donut, The Fleshies, Causey Way, etc...

Life would not be the same without my beloved AT. Sorry for being a pest, but I wanted you to know.

Take Care, Kathryn (Weirdo Freak from Canada)

01/02/05: Jello warms up Edinburgh!
"Huzzah! The package arrived at the start of this week so now I'm all warm in time for winter. The new Jello CD is excellent, it's already fuelled loads of social and workplace rants... I'll try not to worry so much in future about packages, just that I still don't quite trust online ordering so it can make me kinda paranoid. Unfortunately there's just no place in Edinburgh to fulfill my AT needs.

Cheers, Paul."

01/01/05: No Mo' Sales Please!
"Oh god!

Please stop having sales!!!! I'm broke but just can't resist!!!

Please stop!

Kind Regards, Darrin"

12/30/04: Ultra Liberal Politics and Customer Service!
"Well, I just recieved my order today, so everything's just perfect
at the current moment. Well thank you guys for your ultra-liberal politics, innovative punk-indie music, and caring customer service!

12/22/04: "16 Tons (of Mercury)" real-life re-mix
From today's New York Times comes this juicy quote. Newmont is a US corporation which is the largest gold producing company in the world. At one of their Indonesian mines, they have admitted to dumping 16 tons of mercury into Buyat Bay and releasing 17 tons of mercury into the air since beginning operations there in the mid-1990s.

"Today I don't think it is under dispute- that 16 and 17," David H. Francisco, executive vice president for operations, said of the totals. "Is there an impact, is it harmful, is it within the accepted limits we have as an industry, that governments have established? Yeah, I think there was an impact. On the other hand, no, it didn't negatively impact on the bay and the people."

Remember, he's talking about 32,000 pounds of mercury dumped into a bay and 34,000 pounds of gaseous mercury released into the air. I wonder if he would say that if Newmont released 34,000 pounds of gaseous mercury in his neighborhood!

12/20/04: Perfect Shape!
"Hello, I would just like to say thanks I recieved my package today. Everything was there and in perfect shape. The added bonus of free posters, stickers, and buttons you threw in was great. I will definitly keep ordering from Alternative Tentacles. Thanks for everything and hope you have a Merry Christmas.

Don"

12/18/04: Don't Give Up!
"I got my stuff. The jacket, shirts, all of it, very
cool! Went and saw Jello speak at Slim's last night, and I
was sorry to hear that you didn't win your District 5
election, better luck next time! Hopefully for the
people of Berkeley there will be a next time! Don't
give up!!!!"

However, we conservatives should not confuse family values with aesthetics. In the realm of art, our evangelical brethren have many crimes to answer for. When a church replaces Bach with Bacharach it has engaged in the aesthetic rape of the liturgy. Just because one has good intentions and approaches the numinous with 'sincerity' and 'authenticity' (the latter term ironically being a buzzword among the Marxist aestheticians of the Frankfurt School), that does not absolve one from aesthetic responsibility.

As far as I am concerned, those who advocate a dumbed-down liturgy and schlocky pop music substitutes for Bach, Handel and the masses of the Renaissance, are as offensive as the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church and his perverse sexual politics.

Part of the hard work of civilization is teaching young to be able to distinguish between the good and the bad in all aspects of life. If we teach our young children to obey the 10 Commandments and to obey the laws of the land, but don't teach them to realize that Johann Sebastian Bach is superior to Dimebag Abbott, we have failed as parents and mentors...

De gustibus non disputandem est. Matters of taste are not subject to argument. That has been a general principle of aesthetics for some time, and when we are talking about the visceral preference for Mozart or Haydn or Beethoven among civilized human beings we are on pretty safe ground. I do not understand exactly why I prefer Haydn to my good friend who prefers Beethoven. But we both agree (as do all civilized human beings) that both Messrs. Haydn and Beethoven are numerous steps further along the evolutionary trail than Dimebag Abbott.

Here is one area in which conservatives have failed and failed miserably. Whether it is out of a lack of interest or despair, conservatives for too long have ceded the entire field of aesthetics to the trust fund red babies of the blue states. And look at what this has brought us. So-called heavy metal music, so-called rap music, operas and stage plays in which modern 'stagings' reduce Verdi and Shakespeare to the condition of a schizophrenic's finger paintings. Leftist domination in the visual arts has made a mockery of the aesthetic greatness of modernism and replaced it with the turd encased in Lucite. And the grammatically-challenged racist rantings of Amiri Baraka now pass for poetry.

You've undoubtedly heard by now that a demented fan last week killed heavy metal guitarist Dimebag Abbott at the Alrosa Villa in Columbus, Ohio. While I am extremely happy to hear that the assassin was shot to death by a brave Columbus policeman and I in no way want to engage in a blaming the victim scenario, I cannot deny that there much in Mr. Abbott's demise of one being hoisted on one's petard. The squalor, inhumanity, filth (both in the metaphorical and hygienic senses), depravity, ugliness and ignorance of everything that heavy metal represents (Like rap, I cannot use the noble term music in a description of heavy metal) creates a mindset among its devotees in which Mr. Abbott's assassination was an event that was all but waiting to happen.

It was highly amusing, and also terribly sad, to watch on television fans conducting a 'vigil' for the slain Mr. Abbott outside of the Alrosa Villa. It was an assemblage of ignorant, semi-human barbarians who were filthy in attire and manner, intellectually incoherent and above all else, hideously ugly to the point of physical deformity. Here is a definite case in which the outer appearance of these 'fans' accurately represented the hideousness of their souls. That the physical deformity of their ugliness was self-inflicted makes the spiritual tragedy of their misspent lives all the more tragic.